


This Heart is a Stone

by Elster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Asexuality, F/F, F/M, Female Protagonist, Gen, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relationships are not Sherlock's area, but with John it might just work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Heart is a Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from the kink meme: "Five men fem!Sherlock slept with and the one she didn't", with the last one being John. I cheated and now it's an account of Sherlock's awkward love life rather than a 5+1. Which is probably good.  
> The title is respectfully stolen from the Acid House Kings, because my sister says that fem!Sherlock is Caroline.

Victor Trevor was sweet. Like a puppy. Ironic, considering the way they met. Sherlock had had worse injuries than the dozen or so puncture marks of Victor's tiny terrier and wasn't too worried about the blood, but Victor looked like he would faint any moment, his long boyish face even paler than usual.

He was terribly sorry and attentive, insisting to escort her to the next hospital, and then, after a few days, he was terribly in love with Sherlock. She had watched with a mixture of flattered amusement and sharp curiosity. She'd never had a friend, let alone boyfriend, never had someone notice her in that way, and like every new thing it required observation. Experimentation.

Sex was new, but Sherlock found it much like she'd imagined and largely overrated. Not better than masturbation and infinitely more complicated. It was interesting for a while, but then it was just repetitive and Victor's overly romantic notions began to annoy her. On dates or after sex he would cling to her and she would get bored and itchy and think that it was utterly absurd, all of this.

In the beginning they had talked about books, chemistry and classical music, everything that Sherlock was interested in (and she felt so stupid and self-absorbed for not noticing earlier that he was always just agreeing with her views), but now all Victor ever wanted to talk about was their relationship, about how she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever known and how he missed Sherlock when she was away, and didn't she miss him, too? She didn't.

It wasn't that she didn't like him, but she just didn't miss him either. They saw each other almost every day after all. Absurd.

Or maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe everything they said about her in school was true. Maybe she was a freak, a sociopath, someone who could not love. She thought she should say something, do something, but she was terrified that Victor would look at her like her classmates had, that he would call her cruel or unfeeling and have any right to do so.

Her unease with the relationship grew. The more Victor clung to her, the more she tried to distance herself, which only made Victor cling more. She had a recurring nightmare where Victor asked her to marry him.

This couldn't go on. So she tried to act normal when she was with him - after all it was her fault that it didn't work like it should and maybe she could reverse the trend somehow. It seemed to work for a few weeks, mainly because she began to invent school projects and exams she had to study for (she was a bit offended that he believed her that second one, but then again, she'd always been a good liar).

She tried to think of a way to end this without hurting him. School would end in a year and then she could go to a foreign university, Japan or something, and it would be circumstances rather than anyone's fault. But that year... God, why couldn't she think of something? Why couldn't she love him? Why could she do almost everything and not get this right somehow? Why could she understand thermodynamics but not this?

And then he send her a love letter and that was just too much. There she had it, black on pinkish white, he loved her. He loved her and he had never been anything but friendly and patient with her. There was nothing for it: she didn't love him back for no good reason, she had never missed him and she was a horrible person for planning the end of their relationship.

Sherlock snapped; she phoned him and told him she wanted to break up. Cruel. He began to cry after a while and asked why and she couldn't think of another answer than "I don't love you." Unfeeling. When he began to argue with her about her feelings, about breaking hearts over the telephone, she ended the call. Bitch.

She faked a sick note for school, told her mother something about a work experience project and went to London to live with Mycroft for a while. Mummy didn't believe her as evidenced by the fact that she had obviously called Mycroft and told him god-knows-what. Sherlock had never felt so cowardly.

When Mycroft tried to inflict his brotherly counsel on her, she just played the violin until he went away, and as annoying as he was, he always made her feel like less of a freak. Relativity, probably. They got drunk together on her last night in London and Mycroft agreed with her that love was a ridiculous concept.

"And Sherlock?" he said very earnestly and quite drunk. "I will never forgive you if you become someone's little wife."

It could have been the alcohol, but she was almost certain that she'd never loved her brother more.

~

When Sherlock met her at the reception party of the Young Musician of the Year Competition Irene Adler was dressed as a boy and introduced herself as Benjamin.

Sherlock had wanted to escape the party for a bit, the stupid chat-up-lines and the snobbish discussions about toxic mainstream and the dead of classical music. Narrow-minded, predictable, boring. Irene had found her sitting on the fire escape stairs outside, smoking a joint.

"Do you mind sharing?"

Sherlock didn't particularly. They sat in companionable silence for a while. Irene was so good, she had Sherlock fooled for about five minutes and confused for more than ten. Admittedly, Sherlock wasn't all that sober at the moment, but nevertheless...

"What's your deal?" she asked bluntly when she was sure. "You're transsexual?"

Irene laughed, bright and easy. "No, just bored sometimes. Irene, if you prefer."

The silence that followed seemed a bit defiant, like she was waiting for some kind of argument from her, but Sherlock just nodded. "Ah, I heard people talk about you. Apparently, you're bonkers but your voice is the best thing since the invention of push-up bras. I'm paraphrasing."

Irene looked slightly offended for a moment, then resolved into helpless giggles. "So," she said at length, after she had calmed down again. "What's your deal, then?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I'm antisocial."

"Is that code for 'rude'?"

Sherlock looked at her and couldn't help the smile. "Probably," she admitted.

They fell silent again. It was nice, Sherlock's thoughts were fuzzy and distant; she watched the stars and listened to the snatches of music drifting out to them.

"Marijuana makes me horny," Irene said eventually. "Interested?"

Sherlock looked at her again, estimating attraction was always a bit of a conscious effort for her. Irene had dark skin, a mischievous smile and beautiful eyes that looked entirely black in the dim light. She was shorter than Sherlock and a bit on the chubby side in comparison. Then again, Sherlock was rather skinny, so probably curvy, not chubby.

"Never had sex with a woman," she said indecisively.

Irene shrugged. "You should try it. Or you could call me Ben."

It made them both crack up.

They didn't have sex, not that evening and not for a long time, but they struck up a friendship.  
They were almost inseparable during the competition and often visited each other after.

Sherlock found herself absolutely fascinated with Irene. She really had a wonderful voice, but her wicked sense of humour and her easy confidence were what Sherlock liked most about her. She'd never gotten along with other girls before, either because they thought her strange or because they'd felt threatened. Irene went as far as admitting that Sherlock was quirky, but that was it. She called her Snow White, teased her about her bony little ass and when Sherlock deduced details about her rather promiscuous love life, she was usually more than willing to tell the whole outrageous story.

They had sex some months later, before Irene went back to the United States. Some kind of now or never decision. It was comfortable and pleasant (fucking brilliant, Irene said), but Sherlock found it a bit awkward. Unnecessary.

"Maybe you really are straight," Irene said later while she threaded a tender hand through Sherlock's tangled hair. That was something Sherlock liked very much indeed. "Nobody's perfect."

"You're not disappointed, are you?"

"Oh no," she kissed Sherlock's eyebrow. "Forget that, you're quite perfect. And I'm not the kind of girl to bark up only one tree."

Sherlock smiled. "Slut."

"Prude," Irene retorted with a grin.

When they saw each other again two years later, it was for Irene's wedding. Her husband was absolutely flawless but for the fact that his first name was Godfrey.

"Not only a man, but a lawyer," Sherlock teased.

"Don't judge me, darling. You can fall in love with the oddest people."

"So you say," Sherlock mumbled gloomily. It wasn't regret, it wasn't even jealousy what Sherlock felt. Just an annoying sense of not quite understanding something that seemed so easy for everyone else.

~

Sebastian Wilkes was a strange experience. Sherlock didn't like him at all and he didn't like her. He was an arrogant chauvinist bastard and she was the girl that never followed any rule. She couldn't ignore him, his very existence was irritating. It made the undeniable sexual tension between them only more confusing. She'd never been attracted to anyone and now him?

"You want me, Sherly, I knew it!" he sneered when they pulled apart from their first kiss. His lip was bleeding, which gave Sherlock a bit of satisfaction as she bristled at the hated nickname.

She kissed him again to shut him up. It was so stupid; they were exactly alike in their distaste and lust for each other, so what made her the conquest in this? What made him think of the sex as a victory for him? What made him assume she should take it as a defeat? Stupid. And irritating.

The sex was hand-to-hand combat in a psychological war and she enjoyed it. She was winning. Seb hated that she refused to feel ashamed when he boasted about the sex in front of his friends. He hated that he could never make her jealous by parading other girls in front of her. He hated that he couldn't control her, couldn't have her in any way that mattered. He hated that she learned to deduce his every thought.

And just like this, the spell was broken. He was fucking her, but it wasn't the same as before. There was no reason any more, it was as absurd as sex had always been. Sherlock felt vaguely disgusted and bored all of a sudden. She realized that this had become Victor all over again; Seb wanted her. For whatever stupid reason. Seb wanted her, because he couldn't have her. But she realized that she had figured him out, that he would never do anything unexpected and interesting again. She didn't want him any more.

"What am I still doing here?" The question wasn't for him, but for herself; distracted.

"Hm?" Seb had never been much good with holding his end of a conversation during sex. She shoved him off and stood up from the bed (A bed! What had become of this?) to search for her clothes.

"We're through," she informed him.

"What?"

"It's boring."

He looked at her in disbelieve while she dressed. "You're fucking with me."

"Not in any sense. That's the point."

"Is that one of your mind-games?"

"No." That might have been a lie.

She got away before his confusion gave way to anger. When she stepped out of the building he was at the window, shouting down that she was a crazy bitch and would be back for his cock in no time. Typical. He would never get it. She laughed. She'd never felt so free.

~

Lestrade came as a saviour, which might have been the whole problem. Sherlock's life had taken a sharp downturn after uni, mainly because she had no fucking clue what she wanted out of it and had taken to drugs and living on the streets to avoid Mycroft's disapproving little speeches. Wise words, no doubt, but she always started drifting when he droned on about responsibility and being an utterly boring, power crazed robot or whatever it was that floated his boat.

When he asked her why she didn't look for a research project, why she didn't go for a Ph.D. all she could come up with was to tell him that it was dull. Science was fun, but she had been informed that her documentation was abysmal and she wouldn't get anywhere in scientific society if she didn't learn to work in a team. Tough. She didn't want to spend her life in a stupid lab anyway. That left the question what she would do instead. She'd been interested in crime in her teens, like she'd been interested in anything that involved complex problems. A life of elegance and danger. Not very likely. She didn't dwell on it very much, she could imagine what Mycroft would have to say about that.

But then she stumbled over an organization that kidnapped homeless people to do medical trials, so she did what anyone in her place would have done: she investigated and began to stalk the responsible police inspector.

The problem with Lestrade was (and is) that he is appallingly chivalrous. Also a bit slow on the uptake, but then everyone is. Lestrade was under the illusion that Sherlock had come to him as some kind of poor traumatized witness and he's still not entirely over that first impression. He doesn't get that Sherlock doesn't need saving.

But that is neither here nor there, back then the mix-up was inconvenient, because she had decided that the easiest way to win him for the plans she had for this investigation was to seduce him. Admittedly, Sherlock had speedballed to stay awake after two days of running around London and gathering evidence, and probably didn't make much sense at the time she first made contact with him. Probably wasn't all that sexy either.

He'd let her into his flat, resisted her advances (she didn't remember much of that, thank god) and tucked her up in his bed, when she eventually crashed. She found him on his couch the next morning, working again, or maybe still working. He made her breakfast. Since Irene had left, no one had been so undemandingly nice to her. It made her wary.

He soon realized that she knew more about the case than he, that she had contacts and witnesses he could never access and that she basically just needed him to act as back-up when she went in as bait. Not so slow after all. Not at all agreeable to her plans either.

"Are you actually clinically insane?" he shouted. Sherlock saw no reason to get hysterical over this.

"If I was I wouldn't have told you before doing it," she said reasonably. "It's perfectly safe."

"It's not! I can't take the responsibility for this!"

"You don't have it," she answered coldly. "I'm not some kind of flailing damsel in distress. I'll do it no matter what you say and you'll back me up no matter how much you bitch about it."

And of course that was how it happened, except for the part where Sherlock's plan didn't account for the criminals taking her hostage when the shit hit the fan. But then you always have uncontrollable variables, so Lestrade's I-told-you-so attitude was entirely unwarranted. It had worked, hadn't it? Minor flesh wounds notwithstanding.

Despite his misgivings, Lestrade helped Sherlock to set herself up as a consulting detective after that case. Maybe it was some kind of hero complex on his part or the somewhat delusional believe that after saving her life once he had to keep at it. All he demanded in return was for her to stop taking drugs. It was good to have something interesting to do, so she didn't complain.

They had sex only once and Sherlock doesn't really know what that had been. It was after a particularly depressing case of missing child turned abduction by mother turned murder-suicide fast enough to make even Sherlock's head spin. It was so stupid, why hadn't she been faster in recognizing that the boy was adopted? Why hadn't she seen the the biological mother wouldn't even try to leave the country? Stupid.

And then she had invited herself into Lestrades flat to get smashed together and she had cried for the first time since... she didn't even know. They had kissed and they had fucked and she'd been too drunk to care. The next morning, hangover pounding in her head, it felt terribly wrong.

Like she'd had sex with her father. Or no, she'd never thought of Lestrade as a father figure, it was irritating enough that he seemed to see her as some kind of daughter sometimes. Like she'd had sex with Mycroft. A fitter, stupider, less annoying Mycroft, but except for that the two were almost interchangeable in Sherlock's life. Dear god. Thank you, brain, for thinking that out loud. Sherlock tried to delete the thought.

She fled the scene after her head had cleared enough for walking to become an option and took on a truly mediocre case in France to get away for a few days. When they saw each other again they were both equally relieved that the other didn't mention it. Some things better stay forgotten.

~

It was around that time that she got married to her work. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. The only one. She was the best in her field, she was independent and, most importantly, she was never bored by her work. She was bored when there wasn't work, but that was not the same and couldn't be helped. She loved her work. She'd never had so much fun. It was a good match.

Having a semi-steady job also got Mycroft off her back, though he always found something to bellyache about and if it wasn't the danger it was financial nonsense. Sherlock couldn't understand it, money had never been her problem. True, she was quick to spend it when she had it, but she didn't miss it terribly when she was poor again. If she needed some, she could always sell things, saving it was just tedious.

The rest of her life settled, she thought about relationships for a while. Quite frankly, it seemed too much hassle for too little gain. She'd sorted herself out and she wasn't naive enough any more to believe that love would be the thing that magically transformed her into someone less strange and objectionable. She probably was a sociopath, after all she'd never loved anyone, she lied, she manipulated.

True, there were people she genuinely liked, like Irene and Lestrade, her parents and even Mycroft on his better days, but that's just not conclusive. Sociopaths can like people, right? And really, did she want all the strange emotions and the empathy and the confusion of a relationship? Why would she want to need someone, to give up her precious independence for- yes, for what exactly? What was there even to want? She had come to terms with the fact that she'd never really liked sex despite the fact that everyone seemed to think that it was the best thing humanity had ever gotten up to. Maybe it was the same with love.

Sherlock decided that her work was fulfilling enough.

~

But now there's John Watson, who walked into her life and changed everything.  
John is unprecedented.

He isn't special, not objectively. He's a bit unusual, yes, but thousands of people are. John is very kind, dangerous and a bit insane. Brave and broken and utterly dependable. He is a million different things and Sherlock doesn't know all of them, but she wants to.

She wants to have him around pretty much all of the time which is something entirely new.

And there are things about her he truly understands, while no one else ever did. He doesn't always approve, but he gets it and he never tries to make her change.

"You risk your life to prove you're clever," he said after they knew each other for just one day. No judgement, just this. It sums her life up pretty accurately. And put like that it does sound a bit idiotic. But she thought about it and she's quite sure that she really can't alter her priorities that much.

John may once in a while think that she's an idiot (and it might even be true more often than she would admit), but he usually thinks she's a genius (which is obviously true all of the time).

John understands that Sherlock doesn't need a knight in shining armour. She's not that kind of woman. What she needs, what she always needed, is back-up and John does that expertly. It's not so much the fact that she trusts him, there is a handful of people she trusts; what's new and thrilling is that he trusts her, too. Trusts her to handle herself and do what's necessary. He thinks she saved his life. Just by existing. He's obviously raving mad.

She suspects she might love him.

The whole Moriarty business could have played out very differently without John. The thing is, Moriarty is kind of her type. Not in a sexual way, obviously, he was just a name for months, but everything else. So very interesting. Evil, but exciting. Like Seb empted up to eleven.

There had been a time when she would have played the Game with him. She would have crossed his plans, but let him get away for the next round. He would have made little riddles for her to show her his victories. They would have been the only two people to know the score.

If that's what he wanted, Moriarty had chosen the wrong opening gambit. Sherlock had been undecided until then. But that short moment, when she had thought for a second that John was Moriarty, had hurt. She didn't want John to be Moriarty. No matter how brilliant an enemy he was, her John was a thousand times better.

And John wants her to destroy Moriarty, so that's what she will do. That's love. Probably.

Everyone assumes they're a couple, but they're not. And sometimes she's afraid that someone like Sarah might come and snatch John away. A proper girlfriend.

He's neither tall nor overly handsome, but he is... well, cute, for lack of a better word. Sherlock doesn't really do cute, but she can see how John would be attractive if that was your thing. And he is better at hiding that he's almost as much of a lunatic as she is, so that's a plus, too. Or a minus, depending on perspective.

Sherlock did a gedanken experiment; she thought about sex with John, because, obviously, if she would become the girlfriend the problem would be solved. It didn't work.

She imagined kissing John. The way she did it first, it was like CPR, but then she never really understood kissing. She tried again, imagined the both of them high on adrenaline, after a chase. They could lean into each other, out of breath, their lips would meet-  
and they'd burst out laughing.  
Skip kissing.

She pictured John naked, but it's just that: John naked. She's seen it (she's bad with closed doors, John had pointed it out a few times), and it's not all that exciting except for his scars. Those are very interesting, the way one of them is formed at the edges like-  
and there she got derailed again.

Frustrated, she tried to think of John doing something sexy, but all she came up with is him firing a gun. Oh well. Never mind.

She can deal with the girlfriends. John's never mad at her for long.

Sherlock has only a vague memory of what happened after she blew up the pool. She remembers the burnt taste of chlorine wet ashes and searching for John. She remembers how he looked, lying between the rubble, like the whole world and heartbreaking. Falling down next to him, sweat and singed wool and his pulse barely there under her numb fingers. Then passing out (she never faints).

Waking up to hospital smell and John's voice telling her about the house they'll have when they retire. (He knows.) In the country, with a large garden and a shed for her experiments. She dreamt this just now. Bees and apple trees. It's horribly boring, perfectly mismatched to everything she ever wished for her life. It's brilliant.


End file.
